Samsung Galaxy S10: What’s New and What’s Copied

Samsung prides itself in being an innovative brand. And while that might be true, it does seem that sometimes it has to look over for “inspirations”. Just recently, it has revealed its latest flagship, the Galaxy S10. While the specs are impressive and design unique, as we shall discuss later, there were some things that invoked a sense of déjà vu.

Image: PCWorld

In fact, it does look like Samsung did, after all, adopt some things that its rivals came up with. While it may not be that big of an issue, it does seem odd that a brand that is reputed for its originality, do such a thing. However, we believe that imitation is the best form of flattery. Therefore, if a brand copies something from another brand, it must be worth copying in the first place.

Along with the reveal of the Galaxy S10, Samsung also revealed its all-new wireless earbuds called the Galaxy Buds. While they looked completely unique, they were actually inspired by Apple’s infamous AirPods. The design of the Galaxy Buds may be new but the whole concept of completely wireless earbuds started with the AirPods.

Image: Samsung

And it doesn’t end here. The AirPods came with a case that was used to charge them, so do the Galaxy Buds. However, props to Samsung for adding the ability for the Buds to wirelessly charge. Costing only $129.99, the Buds also come in cheaper than the AirPods. They are also available free with the preorder of the Galaxy S10.

Next, onto the features of the Galaxy S10. There are many, some of which were even leaked before the official reveal. There was, however, one that seemed familiar. It happened to be the introduction of reverse-wireless charging. What it meant was that the Galaxy S10 could act as a makeshift wireless charging pad and charge other Qi-enabled devices wirelessly.

Image: ZDNet

Before the S10, this feature was only unique to Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro. However, this feature is more of a gimmick anyway as the charging speed is painfully slow. It also comes at the cost of your own battery life so I doubt a lot of people will use it. Though Samsung has made it a bit more useful with the introduction of its wirelessly charging Galaxy Buds. That allows you to charge your Buds on the go without the hassle of carrying separate chargers.

Apart from these, the Galaxy S10 is completely unique and packed with numbers that’ll put any current smartphone to shame. There are 3 variants: S10, S10+ and the budget-friendly S10e. Each with unique specifications. Let’s have a look at them.

Display

Samsung is famed for making the best smartphone displays. Naturally, they didn’t disappoint this time either. The S10e, S10 and the S10+ have a 5.8″, 6.1″ and 6.4″ displays respectively. They feature a Dynamic AMOLED that has a resolution of Full HD on the S10e and Quad HD on the S10 and S10+.

The display is aptly named the Infinity-O Display due to the fact that it covers almost the whole front end on all 3 devices and has a cutout hole for the front camera. Yes, that means that there is no notch. Brownie points for Samsung here for originality.

Camera

As far as the front cameras are concerned, all 3 phones have a primary 10-megapixel shooter with an aperture of F1.9. It does have the ability to autofocus and also comes with the Live Focus feature, which is Samsung’s term for Portrait Mode. The S10+, however, gets a secondary depth sensing unit in the front. It has a resolution of 8-megapixels, an aperture of F2.2 and a slightly wider field of view of 90˚ compared to the 80˚ on the primary unit.

In the back camera department, the S10e gets 2 cameras while the S10 and the S10+ both get a 3 camera layout. Common on all 3 are the two 12 and 16-megapixel shooters. The 12-megapixel unit has a variable aperture of F1.5 and F2.4 and has a normal field of view of 77˚. The 16-megapixel one has an aperture of F2.2 and has a wide angle of 123˚.

The S10 and S10+ get an additional unit of 12-megapixels. It opens up to F2.4 and is telephoto with a 45˚ of view. All 3 phones are capable of recording at 4K at 60fps while having the ability to record Super Slow-Mo videos of 720p at 960fps.

Software

All 3 phones come out of the box with Android 9.0 (Pie) along with Samsung’s new OneUI. OneUI is Samsung’s new user interface that has replaced the outgoing TouchWiz. OneUI is a cleaner, lighter and a purer approach to Android. Needless to say, it still comes with a lot of its own features that make it far from a stock Android experience.

Security

Samsung may have jumped on the in-display fingerprint bandwagon here. However, where a traditional scanner of this sort uses an RGB sensor, the S10 and the S10+ come with an Ultrasonic Scanner. What it does is, is send ultrasonic pulses that reflect off from your finger to help make a 3D model of it, unlike an RGB sensor that takes a 2D image. Not only is it, faster and more efficient than an RGB sensor, but its also more secure and can’t be fooled.

The S10e, however, does not have it and comes with a traditional capacitive fingerprint scanner that is integrated into the power button. All 3 variants retain the usual Iris Scanner that debuted in the Galaxy Note 8.

Performance

This is where the S10 will truly shine. It comes a 7nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, which is one of the most powerful mobile chipsets out there. Though, the international versions will get Samsung’s own 8nm Exynos 9820, which is no slouch either.

As it goes with RAM and Storage, each variant has its own. The S10e is available with 6GB/128GB and 8GB/256GB configurations. The S10 is only available with 8GB RAM with an option for either 128GB or 512GB of storage. The S10+ has the same configurations as the S10 until you step up to the top-of-the-line Ceramic versions. Then you get a whopping 12GB RAM and 1TB of internal storage. Talk about overkill! If that somehow wasn’t enough, all 3 variants also come with a MicroSD slot of up to 512GB.

The battery capacities are 3100mAh, 3400mAh and 4100mAh for the S10e, S10, and S10+ respectively.

Price

You might have guessed from all those features that the S10 might not come cheap. And right you are. The following are the prices of each variant and configuration.

Galaxy S10e: $750 (6GB/128GB), $850 (8GB/256GB)

Galaxy S10: $900 (8GB/128GB), $1150 (8GB/512GB)

Galaxy S10+: $1000 (8GB/128GB), $1250 (8GB/512GB), $1600 (12GB/1TB)

This makes the top-tier variant of the S10+ more expensive the most expensive iPhone XS Max, which comes at around $1450.

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